Grenier, J.-Y.
Michel Foucault and Money (2024) In The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money: Volume 2: Modern Thought, Ed. Joseph J. Tinguely, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 701-720.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-54140-7_35
Abstract
Michel Foucault broached the question of political economy on many occasions without ever offering a comprehensive study of it in its own right. Money in particular holds a special place in his thinking, even if it too is not considered as a separate theme. Rather money is treated as a component within broader systems whose scope goes beyond political economy alone. Money is part of the elaboration of what Foucault calls knowledge, a notion that is essential in his work. As it relates to money, knowledge takes two forms. The first form is the representation that contemporaries have of money and its inclusion in a more general system of knowledge. This is the approach taken in The Order of Things, a vast reflection on the constitution of knowledge between the Renaissance and the nineteenth century, and a linking of the domains of life science, law, and political economics to the philosophical discourse of their time. The second form is the elaboration of a social and political knowledge produced by the introduction of money and its uses within the societies of antiquity (e.g., the ability to measure value). This is the approach he pursued in the lectures he gave at the Collège de France in 1970-1971.
Author Keywords
Episteme; Exchange; Knowledge; Labor; Measure; Political economy; Representation; Sign; Truth
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